Capricious Apple

Wrong turn

Hmmm. When I wrote about the risk of Apple looking capricious on Monday and said we'd see this more and more, I wasn't expecting it to see new examples of it until at least iOS7.

Seems I was wrong.

I actually got a hint of it last night. I tried to looked up my church (Christchurch Mayfair) on a freshly-iOS6'ed iPhone. While in the building.

Maps then took me to the car park for the Mayfair Swimming Pools.

In Christchurch.

New Zealand.

#ios6apocalypse

Why a "fix" doesn't fix it

Now I'm sure Apple will sort this out over time. Good maps rely on crowd-sourcing for points of interest, so it was always going to be a bit rough at the outset.

But even if Apple "fix" the problem the damage runs deeper than that.

By deliberately downgrading users from the Google Maps to a nakedly inferior offering, Apple have very publically put their corporate interests (get Google off the homescreen) above those of their users (provide them with the best mapping experience).

While that might make excellent business sense, the problem for Apple is their walled garden model is build on an implicit pact with the customer: "I'll let you dictate what I'm allowed to do, because I trust that you are acting my best interests."

Instead Apple are very openly breaking that pact by acting in a cynical and arbitrary manner

In short, they looks capricious.